B2B Marketing Strategy

Designing and implementing a B2B marketing strategy is definitely challenging. There are so many options and sometimes you may even discover you don’t have that many. Either way, committing to specific marketing strategies can feel like your jumping off a high cliff.

Either way, the result should be a customer-centric and competitively dominant marketing strategies. This can be achieved in not just knowing the core concepts of marketing strategy but also in how to implement an integrated marketing program.

What’s changed

The tools of contemporary marketing management

What has changed is the increased advertising and promotional venues, this includes all things digital. Designing and managing a distribution channels has also expanded, from online shopping, brand ambassadors to affiliate marketing programs requires specific communication tools, KPIs and expanded Brand Policy.

Strategic Questions

Perhaps strategic questions have not changed, we’ve added different one from “What else can we make?” to “What else can we do for our customers?” We’ve also added a bigger customer voice during strategic formulation. The customer is not just the end customer, it is also the employee and the community.

Competitive Advantage

Your first competitive advantage can change and erode over time and even your competition can also change. But what’s changed is the increased in direct competition, where your client can now buy the almost same product oversea, online and at a cheaper price.

What has not changed

Core concepts

Working for the past 12 years in B2B, I always developed an integrated marketing communication program that yields customer value. We’ve always worked towards removing standardization to a one-to-one marketing and using a product positioning platform as the foundation for developing the marketing mix.

Market segmentation and product positioning to competitive analysis and communications—these are the core concepts that has not changed and the foundation in developing your own effective customer-centric marketing strategy.

Related

I am a marketing communications specialist, strategist, problem solver and founder of The Marketing Boutique. Services also include competitive analysis, public relations, content marketing to help companies reach their business goals.